Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney said Thursday central bank officials will reassess their easy-money stance in February now that U.K. unemployment is nearing their 7% goal, but stressed that he sees no immediate need for a rise in interest rates.

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England

Bloomberg

In a sign that officials may be preparing to downplay the link they established in August between the unemployment rate and BOE policy, Mr. Carney added that the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee will be examining a range of economic factors to gauge the right interest-rate policy for the British economy, and won’t be “unnecessarily focusing too much on just one indicator.”

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Carney said officials will assess their monetary policy stance and their guidance on interest rates in the run up to the publication Feb. 12 of the BOE’s quarterly economic forecasts.

The central bank pledged in August not to raise its benchmark interest rate from 0.5% until unemployment in the U.K. fell to 7%, a threshold it initially thought might not be hit until 2016.

But faster-than-expected U.K. economic growth has sent unemployment tumbling. Official data released Wednesday showed the jobless rate averaged 7.1% in the three months to November, and many economists expect unemployment to decline to the BOE’s goal within months.

“We have an inflation report… It’s coming out in February and we will do the examination there because we’re close enough to do the examination if people want to know,” Mr. Carney said Thursday.

Mr. Carney, a native of Canada, said the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee will also discuss whether and how to offer guidance on future changes in policy as its 7% jobless threshold nears. He said lowering the threshold to a new goal is among “a broad range of things we could do” but cautioned against concluding that a lower target is inevitable.

He said the committee is eager to stress there are a range of economic variables–not just the jobless rate–that can be used to gauge the amount of unused resources within the economy that can be put to work before inflationary pressures start to build.

“People understand is that it’s really about overall conditions in the labor market, overall amount of slack in companies,” he said.

“And so we wouldn’t want to detract from that focus, which really is properly developed both in the market and amongst business people, by unnecessarily focusing too much on just one indicator.”

He added the U.K. economy is “in a different place” now than it was when the rate-pledge was introduced in August.

Since then, the BOE’s experiment with “forward guidance” hasn’t always gone smoothly, an experience shared by other central banks including the Federal Reserve. The Fed too is increasingly downplaying the importance of its own 6.5% unemployment threshold for considering rate increases as it draws near. The U.S. jobless rate was 6.7% in December.

Fed officials in December said they intend to keep interest rates near zero “well past” the point joblessness meets their threshold.

The BOE’s initial forecasts for unemployment implied that its benchmark interest rate would stay at 0.5% through to 2016, a prediction never credited by investors. The BOE later revised it. Money market rates indicate investors expect the first rate increase will come in early 2015.

Still, officials appear in no hurry to tighten policy. Paul Fisher, the BOE’s executive director for markets, and Ian McCafferty, one of four rate-setters on the MPC drawn from outside the BOE’s ranks, in speeches this week signaled they are content to keep rates low to nurture a speedier recovery as long as U.K. inflation remains subdued. Annual inflation was 2% in December, bang in line with the BOE’s target, and is expected to remain close by.

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